The Peter & Charlie Trilogy

by Gordon Merrick

  “I don’t understand what’s made you feel like that, but I understand what it must’ve done to you. I suppose you hated me just for existing and hated yourself for not really wanting something you thought was so important. I don’t know the rest. I can guess things but I wish you’d tell me.”

  Charlie withdrew his hands from Peter’s grip and sat back, removing himself from contact with him. “I probably shouldn’t. You’re apt to draw conclusions that will make everything worse, if that’s possible. Try to listen carefully. I minded so terribly your being unfaithful to me.” Peter flinched and lifted himself and backed into the chair. Charlie nodded. “Yeah. It knocked everything to pieces, everything I thought I knew and wanted and believed in. I’ve tried, but I still can’t put it all together again. I knew I was wrong to take it like that. I know it shouldn’t have meant so much. I tried to open everything up for both of us, to see how these things work. I’ve failed. I’m right back where I started from. I want us to be sealed off hermetically from everything else. I knew it when I wanted to suck your cock on the beach the other day. I don’t want the baby. I don’t want anything that might let in a little air. For God’s sake, baby, don’t sit there all full of light and love. Don’t you see what it means? It means I’ll kill us just as surely as I would have a few hours ago if you’d let me have my way. I’m sick. I mean it. I’m sick with love. Life might be possible if everybody were like you, but we’re not. Least of all me. I think we’re going to have to leave each other, baby.”

  Peter sat very still in the chair and the tears that had brimmed up in his eyes before now spilled over and ran slowly down his cheeks. “Ouch,” he murmured. “It’s pretty terrible to hear you say that when you’re not even angry with me. Listen. You must know you’re not yourself right now. You’re worn out. You can’t think straight until you’ve had a real rest. Please let it ride for the time being.”

  Charlie nodded dully. “I don’t see how anything will change, but I’m not in the mood for melodrama any more. I’m not trying to prove anything—it’s all being proved to me. I promise that whatever happens, we’ll do it in whatever way is easiest for both of us.”

  “All right. But don’t try to decide what’s easiest for me. Talk to me.” Peter brushed tears from his cheeks and went and sat on the bed beside Charlie, being careful not to touch him. “There’re lots of things. Don’t close your mind about the baby yet. We don’t have to decide anything now. Later, it may turn out that we can play some part in his life. We’ll only be about fifty when he’s twenty. He’s bound to be a boy. I wish he’d hurry and grow up. I’d like to know him.”

  Charlie rose and took another turn around the room. “That’s just what I don’t want. I don’t want to think about it.”

  “I’m sorry. I meant later, of course.”

  “Work it out the way you want it, baby. I think you might really make something of it. Don’t you close your mind to the possibility. It’s just as well you’re going with the Kingsleys.”

  “There’s no hurry about that. I told them we might stay here for several days.”

  “No. The sooner I clear out the better. I’ve got to be alone. I think I’m going to have to be alone for a long time. Always, maybe.”

  “Please. Don’t say any more now. I can’t stand it.” Peter rose and stood in front of him and looked him in the eye. “Are you sure you’re ready to be alone? Can you promise you won’t think any more about—about killing yourself or anything?”

  “I’ve always told you I wouldn’t die without you.”

  “All right. This is going to be hell for me. You do understand why I have to do it, don’t you? It shouldn’t take more than three or four days. Less than a week at the worst. We’ve been dawdling all this time.”

  “Be careful. I know you can handle the boat, but it’s not going to be easy with Jack. Make him use the motor.” Talk of the boat restored some sense of the familiar to them both. They were hurt and helpless, but they were still a pair. “I’ve got to find out about boats to Piraeus. I can probably get one today.”

  “So soon? You’ll wait for me in Athens?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be around. If I go anywhere, I’ll leave word at the Grande Bretagne.”

  “Promise not to worry about me. I’ll be all right. Jack has agreed to get back any way I say. I’ll probably motor all the way. I’ll bawl my head off out there all alone at night. I know you don’t want to touch me but does that include not kissing me goodbye? We may not get a chance later.”

  “Oh, God, baby. I’ve—” Charlie choked on a word. He pulled Peter to him and their mouths met in a long, deep, oddly sexless kiss, fervent with love. Tears were running down Charlie’s cheeks when they broke apart. “I guess I was wrong about not feeling anything any more,” he said.

  Peter lifted a hand and touched the tears with love and gratitude. It was going to come out right somehow.

  They left the room and went out and found a travel agency. There was a boat for Piraeus in a few hours. Peter left Charlie in a cafe and went back to Cassandra and packed a bag for him.

  “I told them I want to leave tonight,” he said to Charlie when he came back. “Since we’ve come all this way, I suppose I’d better go out to Knossos this afternoon. I don’t really see anything when I’m not with you.”

  They had a silent lunch. As they set out for the Piraeus boat, Charlie took Peter’s hand in his.

  “Thanks,” Peter said. “That helps.”

  There was a departure building where the Piraeus boat was tied up. Charlie set down his bag outside it.

  “Don’t let’s make this a big farewell,” he said.

  “No. It isn’t one, anyway. I feel as if we were at the ends of the earth, but I checked the chart again. We’ll make Milos by day after tomorrow. It’s only another day or two from there.” They stood holding each other’s elbows. “You’re sure you’re all right? Take care of yourself. Rest, darling. You need it. I’ll see you at the Grande Bretagne. I love you. If I stand here another minute, I’ll do something that even the Greeks might mind.” He squeezed Charlie’s arms and tore himself from him and hurried away.

  Charlie stood, watching him go. He moved with jaunty grace, the golden head gleaming in the sun. Charlie wondered if he would ever see him again.

  When he reached Athens the next morning, Charlie had decided what he was going to do. At Peter’s insistence, he had kept the name and address of the owner of the Hydra house with his passport. After he had checked in at the hotel, he went out to hunt him up. He turned out to be a courtly old peasant living with his son’s family. When his mission was understood, Charlie was welcomed as the bearer of great good fortune. Lawyers and notaries were visited. Two hundred dollars changed hands. Charlie was presented with an enormous iron key. When the deed had been registered at the title office in Hydra, he would become the official owner.

  He found out with some difficulty that there was a boat for Hydra the following day. He didn’t want to sit around a grand hotel in this dusty, unfamiliar little city. He would go to Hydra and take possession of the house Peter had wanted so much. It would give him something to do, and it would give them something to talk about. He had reached the point where he welcomed anything that suggested a new departure, a fresh start. He felt that he had run through his capital, that everything that had seemed important in the past was worn out and ready to be discarded. He had no idea what they would do with a house in Hydra, but at two hundred dollars it didn’t matter.

  When he was checking out of the hotel the next day, the moment came for him to leave a message for Peter. He started to speak but said nothing. It was unpremeditated. He felt the need growing again to be cut off and on his own. Alone. That would be something new. It might tell him things he should know about himself. He had bought a small bag to carry a change of clothes. The suitcase Peter had packed he left with the concierge.

  “And when shall we expect you back, sir?” the man behind the counter asked.

  �
�I don’t know. You can tell my friend Mr. Martin that the bag’s here. Give it to him if he wants it. Tell him I haven’t left Greece.”

  He hadn’t crossed the lobby to the door before the impact of what he had done hit him. He had severed the ties of all his adult years. He was completely alone. Anything he did or thought or experienced would be for himself. He was uneasy but determined. It was an essential move. If he came back now it would be because he had to come back. He wondered what Peter would make of it. He would be bewildered and angry, but he wasn’t one to panic. He might easily guess where he had gone. Or he might simply sit with the suitcase and wait for him to come pick it up.

  The boat to Hydra took him past remembered landmarks. Salamis. Aegina. He looked at the sea and the sky and wondered where Peter was. The weather was fine; would it be, all those miles to the south? He thought of Peter battling the treacherous sea alone and his chest ached with anxiety and longing to be beside him.

  Eventually, he realized with a start that they were heading in toward Poros. He went out and stood on deck as they entered the long lagoon and thought of the first time it had opened out before him. The white town gleamed beckoningly in the sun. He thought of Peter’s Dimitri with a tensing of his muscles. Promiscuity had nothing to offer him, but he had found the boy in Poros enormously appealing. He didn’t know what he wanted any more; perhaps a purely physical experience, by breaking through his loneliness, would help him think clearly again.

  The boat was steaming in close enough for him to see crowds gathering on the quai for their arrival. He hurried back to his seat and collected his bag and returned to the rail to watch, prepared to go ashore if he saw the boy and responded to him as he had before. The small ship eased in broadside to the quai with a great swirling of water and wild clanging from the ship’s telegraph on the bridge. Lines were thrown. The gangplank was down and passengers were spilling ashore. Others were pushing forward to get on board. There was a great deal of shouting and milling about, so that Charlie found it difficult to concentrate on individual faces. He began to wonder if he would recognize the boy.

  There was a lull as some nondescript bundles were unloaded. Charlie had started to turn away from the rail when he saw him. His flimsy shirt (his only one?) was open and clung to his spare hairless boy’s torso. His face had all the fresh innocent ardor Charlie had found so irresistible; it reminded him of Peter when they had first met. His big dark eyes were darting animatedly over the ship. Charlie let out a shout as Dimitri saw him. His mouth widened in a dazzling delighted grin and he shouted in reply. Charlie flung himself aft toward the gangplank. Passengers blocked his way. He heard a whistle and the ship’s telegraph clanged again. He made a lunge through indignant passengers and yanked his bag free from some obstruction and reached the place where the gangplank had been. It was already up. Lines had been cast free. Charlie saw the water widening between him and the eagerly shouting boy on shore. For a mad instant, he considered jumping overboard. His body was pressed against the rail as he shouted “Hydra” helplessly and pointed. The ship was gathering way. The boy broke into a run as the distance between them grew. Charlie’s eyes lingered on the curve of his throat and on the slim chest heaving with exertion. He saw Dimitri stop and his body slump with disappointment as he lifted an arm and waved farewell. Charlie stood with his body pressed against the rail and waved until the boat followed a turn in the channel and he was blocked from view.

  He found himself churning with excitement and frustration. He wasn’t dead after all. He could still care. Briefly, he had felt poignantly what it must have been like for Peter with Jeannot. Watching Dimitri run after him, he had been ready to sacrifice anything to possess the fleet young body. There had been such yearning in every straining line of it. Could one deny such a gripping urge without loss of some revitalizing life-force? The question had plagued him all summer and he was no nearer to an answer. When did one say yes? Never? Always? Sometimes? When the circumstances were propitious? None of these seemed to provide his disciplined mind with a guide to rational behavior. His excitement subsided and with it his regrets and he returned to his seat for the remainder of the trip to Hydra. He had learned something new. He had learned that what he had only half-believed in his last talk with Peter was true: he had to remain alone. He would be of no use to Peter or himself or anyone until he had caught at least a glimpse of the solution to the riddle. Since it appeared insoluble, the prospect was at best disheartening.

  Taking possession of the house presented no problems. It dominated the eastern arm of the port, a big, square, plain block of masonry that looked more dilapidated than it was. News of his arrival spread quickly and a considerable delegation, determined to be helpful, accompanied him on his first inspection of it. It was habitable in the most primitive sense of the word. Much was made of the fact that there was a cistern full of water under it, which didn’t particularly interest Charlie until he finally understood that there was no water supply on the island. There was a well-head in what had once been a kitchen and he bought a bucket to drop down it. He bought a bed and some rough sheets and a lamp and a single-burner kerosene stove. A table and a few chairs came with the house. He moved in.

  Even after his unexpected decision about not leaving word for Peter, he had more or less assumed that he would go back to Athens in a few days but now he was committed to staying. Something was happening to him. He was getting through to the core of himself; he had to stay until the uncomfortable process had run its course. He missed Peter agonizingly, his nerves were raw with worry about his safety, but this was the price he had to pay to find out what had gone so disastrously wrong.

  The day of his arrival and the second day spent settling-in passed quickly enough so that he was almost able to believe that he could cope with solitude, even though he couldn’t stop referring everything to Peter in his mind. Would Peter want the bed here or over against that wall where there was a view of the sea? He wouldn’t like not having any place to hang their clothes. Would he want a real stove or would he be glad not to bother with cooking here? Being with him was a condition of living.

  On the third day, he realized that, counting the day he had spent in Athens, it would be four days that evening since Peter had been due to leave Crete; with luck, Cassandra might be nearing Piraeus. Immediately after breakfast, he went down to the town and learned that a boat was scheduled the next day at noon. The possibility that Peter might be on it filled him with hope and panic. He longed to see him and to know that he was safe, the balm of his presence would relieve him of much of his torment, but it was too soon. What could they say to each other? He feared being forced somehow into making the break final.

  The sense of not being whole, of being less than a man, that had grown out of his rejection of Martha and her child, still filled him with shame and self-loathing. He was a faggot, playing at being a man, yet the summer had rid him of every vestige of his reticence about his sexual nature. If he had lived with Peter right from the start as openly as he had for the last month, as openly as Peter had always wanted to, he might not have fooled himself into thinking that parenthood was possible for him. In the unlikely event that somebody organized a campaign to erase the stigma from homosexuality, he would gladly lend a hand. He was what he was; he wasn’t breaking any laws. He felt sure of so few things that it was a comfort to have got this much straight in his mind.

  Will What’s-his-name had shown them before where the foreigners swam, so, after finding out about the boat, he took swimming trunks and towel in the opposite direction and found rocks that offered access to the sea and where he hoped he would be undisturbed. He found that lying out languidly, voluptuously under the sun was an added torture: when he rolled over expecting to brush against a familiar body, when he opened his eyes expecting to find Peter’s eyes on him, the shock of solitude was even greater than when he woke up alone in bed.

  The surge of the sea around him reminded him of his brief flirtations with death. Even that escape
was closed to him; Peter had made him realize that he had somehow forfeited his right to such a simple solution. He had to live if only to demonstrate to Peter that they couldn’t live together.

  He lay just long enough to dry off after his swim and then fled the enormous vacant eye of the sky. The crumbling house was a little part of Peter, his choice, perhaps his destination.

  The next day, he was waiting at the landing stage when the boat came in. His eyes swept over the disembarking passengers as they were rowed ashore. It took only an instant to see that Peter wasn’t among them. There was a strong element of relief in his stabbing disappointment. It was still too soon. Besides, four days was barely enough time for Cassandra’s voyage. They would more likely be getting in this evening. He didn’t know if there was a boat tomorrow, but he resolved not to inquire. Counting hours, meeting boats was an indulgence, distracting him from the confrontation with himself that was the purpose of his being here.

  As he came to this decision, he found himself searching for another face as the new arrivals began to climb out of the small boats onto the quai. Dimitri had surely heard his repeated shouts of “Hydra.” The boy’s wild gestures had probably been intended to urge him to stop at Poros on the way back, but they may have indicated that Dimitri might follow him to Hydra. The boy’s ardor suggested he would be capable of it, especially if he had mistaken him for Peter.

  He lingered until he was sure he knew no one among the travelers and then dragged himself back up the hill, moving stiffly. His muscles were still knotted with the desire that had swept through him at the thought of seeing the boy.

  He stopped abruptly halfway up the stepped road and stood stock-still under the blazing sun. A devastating knowledge crashed through all the barriers of his mind; he was nearly insane with jealousy of Peter. That was his sickness. He had been ridden by jealousy, not love, all these years. It was suddenly, blindingly obvious; he couldn’t understand why he felt the need to formulate it in coherent thought. It was basic, something he must have known about himself all along. Jealousy was the monster that possessed him. It was suffocating him from within. He had pretended, even to himself, never to have been attracted to boys with the hope that Peter would adopt a similar indifference. Jeannot, the plots and plans involving Martha, his giving her to Peter (safe, since she wasn’t a boy) had all been sops to appease the monster, all offered in the name of perfect love. He wanted Dimitri only because the boy had flung himself at Peter.